Cooking Calabaza
(Pumpkin Puree)
Nutritious Calabaza squash (West Indian Pumpkin) grows in several parts of the world including: Central America, South America, parts of Africa and North America and throughout Caribbean tropical areas. Ours may have come from Costa Rica, we bought it at ShopRite. The squash was beautiful with streaks of green throughout the melon color. We usually prefer to buy and support locally grown Jersey Fresh produce. Locally grown Pumpkins or other varieties of large squash can be cooked in the same way described below. Simply wash and roast whole. There is no need to waist time and try and cut into a hard-as-a-rock, large pumpkin and risk getting cut; when cooked it slices like butter.
Ingredients
1 Calabaza squash
Cooking
- Before cooking, wash and rinse outside of squash.
- Place the whole squash on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake in a pre-heated 375 deg.F oven for about 1 hr, 15 min. Take out and check to see if done. When cooked the flesh will feel soft when pressing on the sides. Let it cool before touching so you don't burn your finger!
- Let cool on baking sheet another 10-minutes or so.
- Cut out and remove top stem and cut the squash in half.
- Allow to cool another few minutes and spoon out the seeds.
- When cool enough to handle, spoon out flesh into food processor.
- Process until smooth.
- Store in freezer containers and freeze or refrigerate and use in recipes calling for pumpkin puree as needed.
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